Google Now vs. S Voice: What’s the best voice control app on Android? (video)

Android users have been waiting patiently for some months now to get a voice recognition app of their very own that actually works. Samsung led the charge this spring with S Voice on the Galaxy S3, but Google itself is now joining the fray with Google Now voice search — first on the Nexus 7 tablet, and later on other Android devices.

Now that official devices running both these services are in the wild, it’s time to compare them side-by-side and see which (if either) you might actually want to use.

To make a voice control app the kind of thing you’d ever actually use, it has to be fast. When I first started using S Voice on a Galaxy S3, I was satisfied with the speed of the translations. It might have felt a little sluggish on some queries, but it wasn’t until I had hands on with Google Now that I realized how much time I was wasting with S Voice.

Google Now is transcribing the voice into text locally using the new engine in Jelly Bean. The text is then uploaded to do the search, which is very fast. S Voice is probably sending the actual audio to the cloud to be transcribed. It might also have its own local voice processing engine, but if that’s the case, it’s very slow. I doubt the quad-core chip in the Nexus 7 is giving it any advantages. The individual cores in the Snapdragon-packing Galaxy S3 are faster, and Google Now is just as snappy on the dual-core Galaxy Nexus.

The quality of the recognition is definitely better on Google Now, too. In the video above, there were a few times when S Voice just missed words, like Chrome and Wombat, that Google Now understood perfectly. More common words seem to work fine in S Voice, but I constantly feel the need to enunciate more clearly when using it.

S Voice does have more ability to reach out into the Android system apps. It can pull in upcoming appointments when asked, send Twitter messages, and control the hardware radios. Google Now displays a message that insinuates the ability to control settings will be added later, but nothing of the sort is happening at this time. Some of that other data is displayed as cards in the main Now interface; it’s just not integrated into voice search.

The two apps could also not look more different. S Voice displays your questions and the corresponding answers as a conversation in word bubbles. It feels a little too much like Siri. Google Now takes searches one at a time and shows you information in large, well-designed tiles that are pulled from Google’s Knowledge Graph.

The main differentiating factor between these services at this time is availability. The Samsung Galaxy S3 is available on a huge number of carriers, and it will work just as well no matter where you get the device. Google Now is very new, and exclusive to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. You can get it on the Nexus 7, or on the GSM Galaxy Nexus.

I hope that Samsung leaves Google Now and its associated voice search intact when the Galaxy S3 is eventually bumped up to Jelly Bean. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Samsung ditch Google Now for TouchWiz — it trounces S Voice even at this early stage, and that can’t be great for the ego.

Tagged In

RE: availability
Google Now’s functionality is severely hampered if you aren’t in the USA using US English as your system language. Of the nearly 50 tasks you can normally complete via voice, less than half that seems to work here in Australia.

Voice functions powered by Knowledge Graph, simple unit conversions and, obviously, Google searches, work just fine. Unfortunately, only people speaking “American” get to set alarms or send emails, etc.

Marc Guillot

Don’t complaint too much. At least you can do something with it (and you can expect that it will soon improve). I don’t expect to be ever able to use my own language like that (catalan – only 5 millions speakers).

some_guy_said

Are you able to use Spanish voice recognition, or does your native catalan give you too much of an accent? (Or did you never learn true spanish at all?)

SOME GUY

LEARN ENGLISH IF YOUR GOING TO USE AMERICAN MADE PRODUCTS

jokeyrhyme

We speak English in Australia. That’s what makes this so mystifying. And Google’s voice recognition does work here, it’s just this feature that is explicitly disabled.

polhotpot

Ironic that you clearly haven’t learned English, going by your spelling and grammar.

Nickan Fayyazi

Ryan (author), nice article. I see that you have the little Android figure thing :) . I have one of my own, but when I received it, its leg was bent. Within a few minutes, one antenna snapped off, and the second is currently beginning to snap off. I wasn’t handling it roughly; I suppose it’s cheaply built. How do you keep yours in such good condition?

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

Sounds like a cheap imitation or something :P

If you can get Ryan to tell you his Android figure secrets, you are doing better than I…

RyanWhitwam

Every evening I lovingly clean each of my dozen Android figures with rubbing alcohol and place them in a shoe box I have lined with fine silks. I place the box in my fire safe before hiding the key on the top of the door frame. The safe contains no other valuables; just my precious Android vinyl collectibles. I will not allow any harm to come to them.

… … …

Nothing you just read is true. I have found them to be fairly hearty little things. I take no special precautions.

mori bund

Voice apps are highly overrated.
Apple’s marketing division had to find a reason for people to buy the 4S – and IT-sites, bloggers, etc actually bought the hype.

Currently voice apps like Siri, S Voice or Google Now are just nice gimmicks to play around with for some time and then never use again.
No-one uses them seriously longer than maybe the first month.

some_guy_said

I hate to disagree, but I have to. First off, I love playing with Siri, although her real world utility is really kind of limited.

Second, I have google voice on my phone. Lets say I’m driving down the highway, with pandora blasting, Google navigating, and and car mode on.

I get a text. It reads it to me. I dictate a reply. My hands are on my steering wheel at all times. Then someone calls me. I tell it to answer. I have a conversation. The only time I touch the phone is to end a call.

It manages everything else for me (pausing/restarting pandora, opening texts, etc) and is ready to hear me out at the appropriate times.

There are definitely cases where voice software is extremely useful.

mori bund

You’re actually the first person I know who seriously uses it.
Still you’re outnumbered by far.

Nevertheless I think voice apps might have probably a great future – in a few years. ^^

some_guy_said

I don’t think voice recognition will achieve any kind of constant useful ubiquity in the near future (Like in the contrived apple commercials), but I think that it is near or at a point where most people will have good situational uses for it.

Raphael Feliz

i totally disagree.. specially for some simple tasks like calling people while i finish typing an email, or setting the allarm.

rtb61

As a sleep in device they are excellent. Alarm goes off all blurry eyed and fuzzy, grab phone “set timer ? minutes”, go back to sleep (don’t forget to unplug headphones if you like to listen to stuff before going to sleep or else).

http://profile.yahoo.com/DMNZMIUSNPSY2AJ4DCLDOUSUZE James

you failed to comment about Nuance — i paid for the Flex T9 app months ago and use it aggresively. i find that it is much much stronger at voice to text than whatever google had in honeycomb. Nuance are the folks that make Dragon dictate and support a host of voice control systems in cars, etc. they are serious players and deserve to be included in a review like this. As for speed they too are limited by uploading to the cloud to perform the speech analysis. My old Windows 6.0 phone did the voice thing locally and fairly well. the whole “we dont have enough cpu power on the phone so we have to throw it up to the cloud” is just stupid.

http://profile.yahoo.com/PBHOMZISY3FIPIR6DRKNHWLZOE Jayson Pareño

..

http://profile.yahoo.com/PBHOMZISY3FIPIR6DRKNHWLZOE Jayson Pareño

I think it was great, it really helps in someways rather than nothing…

http://profile.yahoo.com/PBHOMZISY3FIPIR6DRKNHWLZOE Jayson Pareño

..I think it was great, it really helps in someways rather than nothing…

StevenJ

Does anyone here with an Galaxy Nexus 4.1 know where the voice dialer is – the instructions and youtube videos show an icon to push thats in your app list – Mine isnt there at all. The problem Im noticing so far with Google Now is you cant set an alarm by date. You can send it for today but when I try to do set an alarm to do the laundry at noon tomorrow you get an error saying it only works for times and not dates

Talha Asghar

Both Are Good

Dman

I use Google Now and the previous google voice utility on my razr extensively and regularly. Texting, email, pulling up apps, making calls, searching, finding music, scheduling etc. It works great! You arent taking advantage of the convenience and power of your device if you have access to a google voice utility and dont use it.

spled12345

You have to say ‘open google chrome’

spled12345

A much better voice recognition app is Robin. You should do Robin vs Svoice. Robin will defeat svoice by the long run.

Debra Oatman

S-Voice will not work without a data or wifi connection. Google now does. That’s huge fire people who turn data off.

ExtremeTech Newsletter

Subscribe Today to get the latest ExtremeTech news delivered right to your inbox.

Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Copyright 1996-2016 Ziff Davis, LLC.PCMag Digital Group All Rights Reserved. ExtremeTech is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis, LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis, LLC. is prohibited.